Victorian Nose Improvers. (1896)

Are you concerned that your proboscis may be unsightly? That your nose may not pass muster in the best company? Never fear! Victorian science is coming to your rescue!

Ship's Figureheads

No-one seems to have forseen that as wooden ships gave way to metal vessels, so the ship's figureheads, the pride of vessels and their sailors since the bronze age, would vanish too.
This article, from the last era of wood and canvas, now has a valedictory air to  it .

Crime and the Crystal ( 1909 )

I leave it to the reader to decide how much of what follows is credible. Today, we take it for granted that images seen in the crystal - whatever their validity - are purely subjective, and cannot be shared by a third party. This Victorian account begs to differ. Otto Von Bourg, the crystal gazer mentioned in the text, did indeed garner worldwide headlines after his apparent discovery of the body of Mr Foxwell.  The Merstham tunnel murder was never solved .

It is only fair to warn the reader that one of the witnesses to the phenomena mentioned here - Miss
Ada Goodrich Freer - has been posthumously accused of plagiarism and fraud, though not  in connection with any of the 'crystal' cases.

Sign Language of Tramps (1902)

Or, fun with chalk.

The Best Accredited Ghost Stories (Strand Magazine. 1908)

Beckles Willson was a noted Canadian historian. He was the author of 'Occultism and Common-Sense' which you can read or download from the Internet Archive.


 

 

A Map of Precious Stones (Strand Magazine, 1902)

Nothing succeeds like excess, said Mr Wilde; and when you're a Czar, excess comes cheap. Let's hear it for the most impressive bijou of them all.

The Monster of Partridge Creek (Strand Magazine, 1908)

This is probably the most unlikely story ever to appear in The Strand. Originally published in a French magazine called 'Je Sais Tout' (I Know All) in April 1908, it was picked up around the world. The shaggy dinosaur, sadly, was never reported again. However, a thought occurs to me. One of the Strand's most popular contributors was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose tales of Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard were mainstays of the magazine. Could this yarn of a dinosaur surviving in a remote corner of the world have served as the inspiration for  Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' which was published four years later?